The noise muffled Bob’s hearing until afternoon and left a high wail in his ears for days, so he couldn’t make out what Dick or Wood or Charley was yelling, nor could he see them much because of the gunsmoke that seeped from the accumulated blankets and moved over the room like desultory weather. He cowered next to the slat bed and clicked back the hammer on the revolver, so scared he could neither shudder nor swallow nor shut his eyes though they burned and itched with gunsmoke. He created rules and modified them—if Wood shot at Bob, Bob would kill him; if he murdered Dick, Bob would kill him; if Wood merely confronted Bob with his gun, surely Bob would need to kill him; if he looked at Bob, then kill him—until it seemed there was nothing left but to kill Wood, kill him soon.
Bob saw Dick dive across to the lady’s dresser and miss another shot at Wood that ripped a calendar down. Charley got out of bed and lunged to the windowsill, where he bent to squirm under the sash. Wood shot at Charley but missed; Bob nearly shot at Wood’s neck but checked himself because of scruples and Charley slipped on the eave shingles and slid off the roof and wumped into a snowbank that was twelve feet below.
It was when Wood was foolishly turned toward Charley that Dick triggered a shot meant for Wood Hite’s heart that snagged Wood’s right arm like an angry wife. Blood flowered under the goat hair of his sleeve and Wood cradled his arm, cherished it for a second, then dipped under the gunsmoke to see Dick slithering backward on the seat of his red union suit to the nook next to the closet door. Wood pointed the Peacemaker at the paramour’s groin but his injured muscles crippled with the revolver’s weight and the cartridge ball veered into Dick’s thigh and blood swatted the floorboards and bedsheets and Dick rocked with agony. Yet he lifted his Navy Colt again as Wood lurched around the doorjamb into the corridor and peeked back. The Colt’s hammer snapped against an empty chamber and Wood switched his pistol to his left hand and squinted the muzzle’s sights in line and it was then that Bob Ford, with calm intention and without malice, shot Robert Woodson Hite.
The round went in just right of his eyebrow and made a small button of red carnage that shut Wood’s motor off. Bob felt his wrist and arm muscles twitch spasmodically when the revolver jolted and he saw Wood’s skull jar to the side, saw Wood collapse to his knees as his brown eyes jellied and reason vanished and a trickle of blood lowered to his blue muffler, and then Wood fell to the left with a concussion that jostled the room, his cheek wetly smacking the boards.
Bob started to rise, but couldn’t. Dick looked at him with consternation, as if Bob had grown antlers or spoken in tongues. Bob released the revolver onto his mattress as he rose over it and walked around to Wood with sickness in his stomach, an apricot in his throat.
Dick asked, “Has he passed away?”
Bob cupped his ear. “What?”
“Is he dead?”
Bob moved him some with his foot and Wood’s maimed right arm slipped from the heap of his coat. Wood’s chest swelled and gradually relaxed and then expanded again. Blood pooled wide as a birdbath under his skull. “He’s still sucking air, but I think he’s a goner.”
Dick collared his thigh with his hands and choked it and brushed his eyes on either shoulder to quench the tears that collected. He said, “Hitch my leg up onto the bed so it won’t dispense so easy.”
He gritted his teeth when Bob seized his ankle and sagged back with a moan when Bob lifted it onto the mattress. Bob snuffed the candle on the floor and walked out to the corridor and looked down at Martha and Elias on the bottom stairs. “Maybe you oughta come up and wish him well on his journey.”
Blood crept away from Wood and drooled into board cracks that languidly conducted it toward the door. Bob stared at it as the stairs creaked, and on hearing the rustle of his sister’s dress, said to Martha, “He’s losing all his stuffing.”
She bumped past Bob, removed her apron, and carefully wadded it under the exit wound. “Do you want to be moved?”
Wood said nothing. His eyes were closed. A string of saliva hung from his mouth to the floor and it bowed with each cold draft of air. Martha tugged the blue muffler off and picked the blood-tipped hair from his brow.
Elias squatted next to her and canted his head to examine the injuries, inquiring here and there with his thumb and then wiping it off on his shirt. He said, “You were a good fellow, Wood. You talked kindly and you took care of your horse and you always pulled your own weight.” Elias looked around, somewhat embarrassed, and then arose with effort.
Martha said, “I hope the pain isn’t frightful, Wood. I’d fetch something for you to drink but I’m afraid it would just make you choke.” Martha paused and added, “Little Ida’s going to miss you. So is the rest of the family.”
She moved off to the side with Elias and cinched the muffler around Dick’s thigh as Bob came so close his toes brushed Wood’s cold fingertips. He said, “Just in case you never noticed, it was me who shot you. I don’t harbor any ill feelings toward you, I was just scared and looking out for my own well-being.” A finger ticked on Wood’s left hand and Bob retreated an inch or two and then recovered his composure. He said, “You’ve done a gallant job of dying so far and have nothing whatsoever to be ashamed about.”
ACCORDING TO MARTHA’S April confession, Wood Hite died “when the sun was an hour high”; at which time the men removed Wood’s clothes and lifted the corpse onto Bob’s twin bed and Dick Liddil onto Charley’s. Dick drank from a bottle of corn whiskey as Martha bathed Wood and anointed his chapped skin with alum and oil of sassafras, then Elias cared for Dick’s mutilated leg with veterinary medicines and a sewing kit that was such an affliction to Dick that he swooned.
Bob put Wood’s goat-hair coat on a closet hanger and balled everything else up in a box. He dressed in the heather green suit he’d purchased in Liberty and he slicked his hair in the mirror over his sister’s chiffonier. He sat down to breakfast and saw Charley sitting under a striped blanket on the stove, steam growing off his back, his sprained ankle round as a melon. Wilbur stood at a window vagrantly lettering the mist on the glass; Ida was
weeping on the sofa; Martha served cold oatmeal and boiled milk and frequently rubbed her eyes with a dishtowel. Only Bob seemed without melancholy, only Bob seemed uninclined to brood. He showed Wilbur the shell of the bullet that murdered Wood Hite and loitered about the kitchen sniffing the burned gunpowder in it. He carried in a jorum that was packed with snow and made Charley step down into it in order to relieve his swollen ankle.
Neighbors visited oh their return from church and Wilbur was dispatched upstairs to shut the bedroom door. The wife talked about the preacher’s inspiring sermon and about the peace that always descended upon her on Sundays, and her husband, John C. Brown, followed his nose through the house, slapping his prayerbook against his thigh. “Do I smell gunsmoke?”
Bob explained, “I ought to get our flue pipes cleaned. Might be chimney swifts in them. I might could do that today.”
“You ought to keep the Sabbath, Bob.”
“You got your religion, I got my own. It isn’t right to spoon it down our throats every Sunday.”
“It’s just that me and the missus, we’re Spirit-fired people, and when you think you’ve got the answer, well, you want to share it.”
“I’d just as soon you didn’t,” said Bob.
Then it was afternoon and the neighbors were gone and no one mentioned Wood or an undertaker, nor wrote a letter of condolence to the Hites in Adairville, Kentucky. Ida mooned in her mother’s room, bread rose in towel-covered tin pans, Elias kept his scowl in a coffee cup, and Wilbur tinkered with a broken clock. Martha sat mute and motionless across from Bob, who intently perused The Farmer’s Almanac. Charley hopped into the kitchen on one foot and snared a cookie in an earthenware jar. He said, “One thing’s settled: can’t take him into Richmond.”
Wilbur looked up. “How come?”
Charley munched the cookie, sprinkling crumbs on his chest. He licked his scant mustache and said, “One: the sheriff will put Bob away in jail. And two: Jesse will find out his cousin Wood’s been shot dead in our house and that’ll be the end for each and every one of us.”
Bob clenched his teeth so that his jaw muscles twitched, but resisted any comment. The conversation languished and Charley hopped back to Ida with the cookie jar. Martha simmered tea and served it to herself. Ice melted from the eaves and peppered the snow underneath. The sun approached the mullioned windowpanes at four o’clock and then it was colder and the sun was screened by the southwest woods and Elias made himself portly with sweaters and coats and patiently waited at the door until Wilbur could torture his feet into Wood’s fine leather boots.